Strategies of amino acid supply in mesozooplankton during cyanobacteria blooms: a stable nitrogen isotope approach

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Increasing sea surface temperatures (SST) and blooms of lipid‐poor, filamentous cyanobacteria can change mesozooplankton metabolism and foraging strategies in marine systems. Lipid shortage and imbalanced diet may challenge the build‐up of energy pools of lipids and proteins, and access to essential fatty acids (FAs) and amino acids (AAs) by copepods. The impact of cyanobacterial blooms on individual energy pools was assessed for key species temperate Temora longicornis and boreal Pseudo‐/Paracalanus spp. that dominated field mesozooplankton communities isolated by seasonal stratification in the central Baltic Sea during the hot and the cold summer. We looked at (a) total lipid and protein levels, (b) FA trophic markers and AA composition, and (c) compound‐specific stable carbon isotopes (δ13C) in bulk mesozooplankton and in a subset of parameters in particulate organic matter. Despite lipid‐poor cyanobacterial blooms, the key species were largely able to cover both energy pools, yet a tendency of lipid reduction was observed in surface animals. Omni‐ and carnivory feeding modes, FA trophic makers, and δ13C patterns in essential compounds emphasized that cyanobacterial FAs and AAs have been incorporated into mesozooplankton mainly via feeding on mixo‐ and heterotrophic (dino‐) flagellates and detrital complexes during summer. Foraging for essential highly unsaturated FAs from (dino‐) flagellates may have caused night migration of Pseudo‐/Paracalanus spp. from the deep subhalocline waters into the upper waters. Only in the hot summer (SST>19.0°C) was T. longicornis submerged in the colder subthermocline water (~4°C). Thus, the continuous warming trend and simultaneous feeding can eventually lead to competition on the preferred diet by key copepod species below the thermocline in stratified systems. A comparison of δ13C patterns of essential AAs in surface mesozooplankton across sub‐basins of low and high cyanobacterial biomasses revealed the potential of δ13C‐AA isoscapes for studies of commercial fish feeding trails across the Baltic Sea food webs.

Section: Foraging Strategies Of Key Copepod Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The temperature program was used as described in Eglite et al (2018). The combustion unit was a Thermo IsoLink fixed at the GC oven and connected to the IRMS via a ConFlo IV interface.…”

Section: Bulk and Compound-specific Stable Isotope Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…we acquired TP estimates of the different mesozooplankton communities from three water bodies (SW, WW, and BW) at the EGB from Eglite et al (2018) and included the data in Table 2 …”

Section: Mesozooplankton Feeding Mode In the Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 93%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Metabolism and foraging strategies of mid‐latitude mesozooplankton during cyanobacterial blooms as revealed by fatty acids, amino acids, and their stable carbon isotopes

Eglite

Graeve

Dutz

et al. 2019

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Trophic lengthening triggered by filamentous, N₂‐fixing cyanobacteria disrupts pelagic but not benthic food webs in a large estuarine ecosystem

Steinkopf,

Krumme,

Schulz‐Bull

et al. 2024

Self Cite

Eutrophication, increased temperatures and stratification can lead to massive, filamentous, N2‐fixing cyanobacterial (FNC) blooms in coastal ecosystems with largely unresolved consequences for the mass and energy supply in food webs. Mesozooplankton adapt to not top‐down controlled FNC blooms by switching diets from phytoplankton to microzooplankton, resulting in a directly quantifiable increase in its trophic position (TP) from 2.0 to as high as 3.0. If this process in mesozooplankton, we call trophic lengthening, was transferred to higher trophic levels of a food web, a loss of energy could result in massive declines of fish biomass. We used compound‐specific nitrogen stable isotope data of amino acids (CSIA) to estimate and compare the nitrogen (N) sources and TPs of cod and flounder from FNC bloom influence areas (central Baltic Sea) and areas without it (western Baltic Sea). We tested if FNC‐triggered trophic lengthening in mesozooplankton is carried over to fish. The TP of cod from the western Baltic (4.1 ± 0.5), feeding mainly on decapods, was equal to reference values. Only cod from the central Baltic, mainly feeding on zooplanktivorous pelagics, had a significantly higher TP (4.6 ± 0.4), indicating a strong carry‐over effect trophic lengthening from mesozooplankton. In contrast, the TP of molluscivorous flounder, associated with the benthic food web, was unaffected by trophic lengthening and quite similar reference values of 3.2 ± 0.2 in both areas. This suggests that FNC blooms lead to a large loss of energy in zooplanktivorous but not in molluscivorous mesopredators. If FNC blooms continue to trigger the detour of energy at the base of the pelagic food web due to a massive heterotrophic microbial system, the TP of cod will not return to lower TP values and the fish stock not recover. Monitoring the TP of key species can identify fundamental changes in ecosystems and provide information for resource management.

Amino acid nitrogen and carbon isotope data: Potential and implications for ecological studies

Yun

Larsen

Choi

et al. 2022

Explaining food web dynamics, stability, and functioning depend substantially on understanding of feeding relations within a community. Bulk stable isotope ratios (SIRs) in natural abundance are well‐established tools to express direct and indirect feeding relations as continuous variables across time and space. Along with bulk SIRs, the SIRs of individual amino acids (AAs) are now emerging as a promising and complementary method to characterize the flow and transformation of resources across a diversity of organisms, from microbial domains to macroscopic consumers. This significant AA‐SIR capacity is based on empirical evidence that a consumer's SIR, specific to an individual AA, reflects its diet SIR coupled with a certain degree of isotopic differences between the consumer and its diet. However, many empirical ecologists are still unfamiliar with the scope of applicability and the interpretative power of AA‐SIR. To fill these knowledge gaps, we here describe a comprehensive approach to both carbon and nitrogen AA‐SIR assessment focusing on two key topics: pattern in AA‐isotope composition across spatial and temporal scales, and a certain variability of AA‐specific isotope differences between the diet and the consumer. On this basis we review the versatile applicability of AA‐SIR to improve our understanding of physiological processes as well as food web functioning, allowing us to reconstruct dominant basal dietary sources and trace their trophic transfers at the specimen and community levels. Given the insightful and opportunities of AA‐SIR, we suggest future applications for the dual use of carbon and nitrogen AA‐SIR to study more realistic food web structures and robust consumer niches, which are often very difficult to explain in nature.